Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

Thursday, 07 February 2013

New York Federal Death Penalty Case May Proceed

Ronnell Wilson is not mentally retarded and can once again appear
before a jury that will decide whether he should be executed for the
murder of two undercover police officers on Staten Island in 2003, a
federal judge ruled this morning.

Eastern District Judge Nicholas
Garaufis rejected claims by lawyers for Wilson that he was mildly
retarded and should be spared capital punishment pursuant to Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U.S. 304 (2002).

Wilson
was convicted in 2006 by a jury in Brooklyn federal court of the 2003
murder of NYPD Detectives James Nemorin and Rodney Andrews. The jury
went on to vote that he be put to death and Garaufis imposed the penalty
in 2007.

But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
vacated the capital punishment verdict on constitutional grounds and
remanded to Garaufis for a retrial on the penalty phase.

On
remand, Wilson requested a pretrial hearing on whether he was mentally
retarded and thus ineligible for a death sentence under the Eighth
Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and the
Federal Death Penalty Act.

Garaufis held a nine-day hearing in December 2012 under Atkins,
where the Supreme Court held that the execution of mentally retarded
individuals was cruel and unusual punishment. At the hearing, believed
to be the first of its kind in federal court in New York, dueling
experts gave contrary opinions on Wilson's intellectual skills and
abilities (NYLJ, Dec. 6, 2012).

This
morning, Garaufis said, "Wilson has not satisfied the burden of proving
that he more likely than not suffers from significantly subaverage
intellectual functioning."

He was one of the most notorious criminals in New York’s recent history,
whose execution-style murder of two undercover police officers led a
jury to issue the first federal death sentence in the city in more than a
half century.

She was a lonely correction officer, assigned to guard the cell block at
the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he was being held.

Inside the federal jail, Ronell Wilson,
the convicted killer, and Nancy Gonzalez, his nighttime guard, would
talk for hours, according to other inmates. They would disappear
together for minutes at a time, behind closed doors. Several times, they
were seen kissing, confirming suspicions of an illicit romance.

Ms. Gonzalez later admitted that the two had sex repeatedly, with the
goal of having a child together. She was aware, she said, of the many
possible complications, from the prospect of facing jail herself to the
difficulty of telling her child the truth about his father. She
explained her motivations to another inmate: “Why not give him a child,
as far as giving him some kind of hope?”

On Tuesday, Ms. Gonzalez, 29, displaying the full contours of a
pregnancy now in its eighth month, was arraigned in federal court on
charges of sexual abuse of a person in custody, because an inmate cannot
legally consent to sex. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 15
years in prison. She stood before the judge in a black overcoat and
sweat pants, softly answering procedural questions while dabbing her
eyes with a tissue.

The press surged around Ms. Gonzalez the instant she stepped out of the
courthouse, and she put her head on the shoulder of her lawyer, Anthony
L. Ricco. “She’s had a very tragic life and as this case proceeds,
you’ll learn more about it and how these affected her judgment,” Mr.
Ricco said. He added, “People find love in the strangest places.”

A female corrections officer was charged Tuesday with having sex with
an inmate facing the death penalty for the 2003 murders of two New York
Police Department officers, authorities said.

According to a federal complaint, Nancy Gonzalez is eight months
pregnant following a relationship with Ronell Wilson, who was sentenced
to death in the homicides of undercover detectives Rodney Andrews and
James Nemorin. She faces charges of unlawful sexual abuse and is
awaiting arraignment in Brooklyn federal court Tuesday.

Gonzalez was captured on video repeatedly meeting with Wilson in a
vacant room inside the Metropolitan Detention Center, and she disclosed
her pregnancy to jail officials in June 2012.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.